A fresh difficulty arose: French Janin positively refused to play on his present instrument before a critical audience.
"It's as thin as a cat," he protested. "Do you want me to make a show of myself?"
"All right; I'll sing alone. Come on!"
Janin's legs were uncertain; he stumbled over the path to the road and stopped at the fence. He expressed fresh doubts, the hesitation of old age; but Harry Baggs silenced him, forced him on. A cold fear possessed the boy, which he resolutely suppressed: if Janin were wrong, his voice worthless, if they laughed, he was done. Opportunity, he felt, would never return. With his voice scorned, no impetus remained; he had no other interest in life, no other power that could subdue the slight inward flaw.
He saw this in a vivid flash of self-knowledge. . . . If he couldn't sing he would go down, lower than Janin; perhaps sink to the level of Dake.
"Come on!" he repeated grimly, assisting his companion over the luminous white road.
Janin got actually feebler as he progressed. He stopped, gasping, his sightless face congested.
"I'll have to take a little," he whispered, "just a taste. That puts life in me; it needs a good deal now to send me off."
He produced the familiar bottle and absorbed some powder. Its effect was unexpected—he straightened, walked with more ease; but it acted upon his mind with surprising force.
"I want to stop just a little," he proclaimed with such an air of decision that Harry Baggs followed him with-
